Tag: coronavirus
Looking Back to Oscar Charleston and Forward to a Strange Baseball...
Before I begin to complain about the shortened season, the lack of travel to the usual hubs, the lack of live fanhood, it might be well to remember those who loved baseball with extraordinary intensity, yet for whom no season of major league baseball ever opened up its bounty.
Brass Spittoon: Wall Street vs. Main Street, 2020
Chris Arnade, Jared Woodard, and Sarah Hamersma on Wall Street versus Main Street.
The Domestic Arts: Finding a Quiet Dignity in the Mundane
As Sarah Orne Jewett knew, "everyday tasks” and the celebrations they engender are the condition upon which many other arts rest, including poetry.
The Danger of Hope: Lana Del Rey, Stephen King, and Wendell...
Lana Del Rey. Wendell Berry. Stephen King. Singer-songwriter. Poet-novelist-essayist farmer. Horror writer. What brings these three seemingly disparate artists together in my imagination? Hope.
The Old Normal is Alive and Well in Paris
No man is an island, and everything we do, even in the privacy of our homes, has an effect on our society as a whole, but the past three months have shown us that the same lie that animates the Chinese government has spread and infected the West as well: the State knows best.
Thinking about the Post-Pandemic (and, Maybe, the Post-Suburban) Neighborhood
Chuck Marohn's work, whatever disagreements one may have with it, gives us some good counsel on where to start changing suburban-addicted minds and fiscal incentives.
Failing in a Pandemic
The whole mode of online education screams that now I must be the source of attraction. But I’m not entertaining. In fact, I’m pretty unentertaining. If you ask most of my students, they may even say I’m boring.
Feeling Claustrophobic in the Big Wide Open
I worry about our ever-expanding cult of safety and nod in agreement with so much of sociologist Frank Furedi’s description of the “Paradox of our Safety Addiction.” He argues that “the zero risk mentality breeds a culture of anxiety and a hunger for authority.”
The Pandemic and the Primacy of the Household
We have been thrown back into our own small worlds, but these are worlds we are free to shape. Within the household we have considerable power over how our lives our lived, what we make, and how we consume.
The Diseases that Kill Republics: Insights from Ancient Rome’s Epidemics
Italy’s tragic status as one of the worst-hit nations is a reminder of its predecessor, the Roman Republic, which endured dozens of epidemics in a history that lasted from 509 to 42 BC. Rome’s survival amidst so much death and disease shows how epidemics, both biological and political, threaten republics.